Germany takes in third Ebola patient for treatment

A third UN employee infected with the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, a Sudanese doctor, arrived for treatment in Germany on Thursday from Liberia, local health officials said.

"He is being treated at a clinic in Leipzig," one of seven health centres in Germany specialised in highly infectious diseases, Ralph Schreiber, a health ministry spokesman in the eastern state of Saxony, told AFP.

The world's largest outbreak of Ebola has killed 3,865 people out of 8,033 infected so far this year, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the latest count of the UN's World Health Organization.

The United States has stepped up airport screenings as the spillover of the virus—with the first diagnosis in the US and the first case of infection in Spain—has raised fears of contagion in the West.

Germany has previously treated two WHO employees infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone—a Senegalese expert who was treated in Hamburg and released on October 4, and a Ugandan doctor now being treated in Frankfurt.